Catherine Clark: We’ve given the introduction about your role with RBC and a whole bunch of other stuff – but how did you end up in the financial services sector? Was this always the dream? Were you a kid dreaming of working for a financial institution, or did you consider other career options along the way?
Amy Childs: Yeah, great question. Have you yet met a banker who has said, “Yes, this was the dream”? It wasn’t the dream for me, but I’m here and I love it!
How I got here, though: out of school, I started as a consultant. And why consulting? I went to business school where you’re able to continue to learn, work with different companies in different industries, facing different problems.
I ended up at a consulting firm – a niche firm, focused on executive compensation, and I loved it. It ignited, for me, a real passion for people and strategy.
After a couple of years, I leveraged that experience to get me in at RBC, initially starting within the compensation team, but then moving into a number of different areas within HR.
Since that time, I’ve had the HR experiences, I’ve worked in different head office roles within our commercial bank, and I’ve worked in different sales roles within our commercial bank. So I’ve been really fortunate to have a lot of different opportunities while at the bank.
But no, it didn’t start out as wanting to be a banker, but I’m glad I’m here.
Jennifer Stewart: I love that journey. And I think, when we look back on our life, there are certain experiences that shape us or teach us lessons or change the trajectory of our life or career. Can you share with us what those experiences have been for you along the way?
Amy Childs: I think what’s shaped how I’ve looked at life would be my upbringing.
I grew up in Thunder Bay, in a real girl-power house. I have two sisters who are my best friends today, a strong mom, and a super supportive dad. I had incredible friends starting from kindergarten; they’re some of my best friends today.
Our parents kept us very active in all things, whether sports, Girl Scouts, mountain biking, sewing lessons – you name it.
I think all of that helped really build confidence and taught me the importance of a great support network. There’s something about growing up in a small community where you help your neighbours, and that’s something that I try to bring with me.
Just being exposed to all these different experiences early on, I think, has made me sort of the jack of all trades that I like to refer to myself as today.
So definitely, my upbringing has really informed the things that I enjoy and the career decisions that I’ve made, too.
Catherine Clark: There’s a big difference, though, between growing up in a small community and then working in a big job for a really big company in a big city. Have you had to adapt in certain ways that you didn’t necessarily anticipate you would, having to take on this big role and the change that comes from being part of a major institution?
Amy Childs: Yeah, for sure. But you find community everywhere, and I’ve had so many people who have helped me along the way.
Whether it’s, again, going back to my family – I’m very close with my sisters – the support network, the peer network that I have at the bank, I’ve been really fortunate, too, to have a couple of really great sponsors in my career who have truly embodied what it means to be a sponsor, and then just also had really good people along the way who have helped me out.
I think about when I was in third year, trying to land that summer internship. I sent out something like 100 different cover letters and resumes. And again, I grew up in Thunder Bay. I didn’t have the Toronto connections, right?
After trying and trying, I remember calling home one day to my mom and bursting into tears, saying, “I can’t land something. I’m coming back for the summer.”
I was home in Thunder Bay for a week and got a call. At the time, I was trying to get into brand and marketing, and I got a call from a really big global firm. I did the interview, had no idea how they had gotten a hold of me, did the interview, got the job, moved to Toronto, got the experience.
And my first day there, this woman came to my desk and she said, “You know, I got your cover letter. I was at a different company, but I came here, and they were hiring, and so I put your cover letter forward.”
And I thought, “Oh, wow, my gosh! You didn’t even know me, but this is something that you held onto.”
That gave me corporate experience. So then, as I was looking for that first job, it helped me demonstrate that I had started to work at an organization, and build the skills.
And just this random person at that point in time did so much for me. I’ve had so many different good people who have really leaned in along the way. That’s something that I try to pay forward, too.
Jennifer Stewart: That’s great because we often think of sponsorship or mentorship as this long affair, with checkpoints every month or consistent check-ins. But we’ve chatted a lot about mentoring in the moment, or finding those little doors you can open, like that individual did for you when she shared your cover letter, that can really change the path of your life, frankly, and your career.
You touched upon how you’re paying it forward now. Can you unpack that a bit for us?
Amy Childs: I would say every week there are two to three different coffee career chats that I’m having, whether it’s talent at the bank or external as well.
I’m still really connected to my alumni community, and so I’m meeting with a number of different students who are trying to break through and get that job. Given the experience that I had, I’ll never forget that and the help that I got.
As I’ve stepped into bigger and bigger leadership roles and lead bigger teams, I’m trying to be a great leader and support the people that I lead, coach them in the moment, understand where they want to take their careers, and help them along the way.
Again, because I’ve had so many people who have helped me along the way, I really try to carve out the time and make it an ongoing thing, and respond to those random requests, too.
Whether it’s me meeting directly with people or helping to make connections within my network, that’s something that I try to pay forward as best as possible.
Catherine Clark: You’ve talked about two interesting, different components of your life. One is your own professional growth within an organization on a forward-moving trajectory, but also the coffee meet-and-greets that you’re having with people who are just starting out or who just need a little bit of extra support as they build their place in the professional world.
Have these two things changed your own definition of success or your idea of what fulfilment means?
Amy Childs: I think my definition of success has evolved with age and with time. I’ve always been pretty hard on myself over the years, whether it’s work, sports, even relationships. Am I doing enough as a partner, as a friend?
Over time, I’ve let myself off the hook a little bit. I’ve learned to dwell less and be kinder to myself.
I’m a mom now, too. I have an almost four-year-old and an almost one-year-old, and that has definitely changed the definition of success.
I continue to be ambitious and have big professional goals for myself, but at the same time, I have personal goals and life goals, and I want to be a good mom.
When I got my first executive role at the bank, I was actually on maternity leave, and I remember getting the call from the hiring leader and saying, “I’m so excited for this opportunity, and I’m going to do a great job, and I’m going to work hard. But I need you to know that I want to be a really good mom, too.”
I’ve been very fortunate to have leaders who have emulated being ambitious but being balanced at the same time, and RBC has been super supportive in that regard.
And he said, “Of course, you know, if you need to work from home or no calls after a certain point in time, do what you need to do because it’s important – I want you to do a great job, but I know how important that stability at home is going to be in order for you to do that great job.”
So I think it’s age and time that have shifted how I view success, and then also this new role of being a parent has definitely shifted it.
Jennifer Stewart: How did you tangibly enforce ways to give yourself grace when it came to being less hard on yourself? How did you actually train your brain to think of it differently in those scenarios?
Amy Childs: “Water off a duck’s back” is one of my favourite sayings.
Sometimes you walk out of a meeting or a conversation or a presentation and you think, “You know, that wasn’t the 10 out of 10 that I hoped it would be.”
Again, this is where time and perspective and experience come in. We’ve all had those moments. The next day or the next week, is anyone talking about it? No, right?
So I think it’s the time and experience that have enabled me to say, “Yeah, it wasn’t great, but what did you learn from it? What are you going to do differently next time? And what is dwelling on it really going to do?”
Catherine Clark: But that must have been hard if you’re someone who’s hard on yourself. When we’re hard on ourselves, those are the little things that drive us nuts, right? Those are the things that can be the hardest to block.
So how have you learned to be less hard on yourself? To Jen’s point about grace, how have you learned to just adapt?
Amy Childs: I think it is a lot of self-talk and reflection. The negative things that you may be saying to yourself, when you really challenge them and put yourself in the shoes of, you know, stepping outside of yourself, are you viewing this situation fairly?
I had someone say to me a number of years ago such a simple line, and we’ve all heard it, but: “Be kind to yourself.”
That’s something that I’m constantly trying to remind myself of: be kind to yourself. Do you really think you’re fairly assessing yourself in this situation?
If this was a friend who was calling you, or a colleague or a coworker, is this what you would be saying? No, you would be saying, “Come on, get some perspective. It wasn’t as bad as you thought, and it was maybe one bad presentation or meeting, and again, probably wasn’t as bad as you thought.”
So I think that’s how I’ve adapted, and it’s a constant reminder to be kind to yourself.
Jennifer Stewart: So I personally don’t like the word work-life balance because I think at different points things don’t balance, and sometimes it’s your career, sometimes it’s your family.
I call it work-life integration all the time with my kids. You know, as an entrepreneur, I’m able to pick you up from school today, but I might have to be on my phone as soon as we get home, that type of thing.
And boundaries are super important. They’re, frankly, the best thing I’ve done in my life.
How do you integrate your work with your family life and a demanding job?
Amy Childs: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Work-life balance is something you’re never going to achieve, and boundaries are absolutely critical.
For me, I think about it in buckets. There’s relationships, whether that’s with your kids, your partner, your friends, your family. There’s career, your health, your finances, and just the things that give you joy, personal growth, self-care, and self-reflection, which are really important to me.
It’s a regular check-in to say, “Okay, as I think about these buckets, how am I feeling on each one?”
They’re never all going to be entirely full, but the ones that are feeling particularly low, okay, well, there needs to be some sort of recalibration to try to fill those buckets up a little bit.
So that’s how I approach it: regularly checking in on how I’m feeling in each of these buckets, which ones are feeling particularly low, and how I’m going to recalibrate to get those ones up a little bit.
They’re never all going to be at 100%, and to your point, the trade-offs are really important.
I’m grateful and thankful to have friends and family who get it. We’re all sort of in it, and if I disappear for a few months and then there’s a text message in, or we get that dinner scheduled, you don’t need people who make you feel bad about it. You need people who say, “I totally understand,” and you just pick up where you left off, right?
Fitness is important. I used to work out a heck of a lot more before having two kids. I try to squeeze it in where I can, and I keep joking, “In 10 years, I’m going to be my fittest yet.” But this is a moment in time, and that’s not that moment.
So that’s how I think about it.
People get boundaries, but I think sometimes people feel nervous to set those boundaries, and they think they’re going to be judged for those boundaries. And you’re not, because everyone has them.
Catherine Clark: Well, and I think the other thing is whether you really care if you’re judged for the boundaries that you’re setting at those points in your life, too, right?
Picking up your kid from their last day of daycare is a boundary that’s important to you because you’re going to remember that. You’re going to remember that when you’re retired and looking back on your life.
Similarly, you’re going to remember it if you didn’t have boundaries and you have to keep saying to yourself, “Man, I wish I’d been present in that moment.”
I love that you talk about the fact that the buckets are not always going to be, or maybe never going to be, 100% full, because I think as women we do expect that perfection, that we can keep all the buckets at the same height.
What advice would you give to other women who are trying to build meaningful careers while also figuring out their own boundaries and what they want from their lives?
Amy Childs: I think careers are long, and life is unexpected, and your interests shift, right? What I wanted 10 years ago is different from what I want now, and it’s probably going to be different from what I want in 10 years.
I think trying to have a perfect plan for your career is not going to work. Perfect plans rarely work out.
I think about the times when I did try to have the perfect plan. I was in one role and trying to grow our family, and sort of thought, “Okay, well, I’m not going to go for that next role until after having this child.”
Then we started to have fertility challenges, so lining everything up wasn’t really an option.
I kept going career-wise, and new opportunities presented themselves, and great opportunities that really helped to accelerate my career. And I’m glad that I did that because there was a part of my life that was really important to me that sort of felt stalled, and that was frustrating, right?
But at least I had – quite honestly, it was a bright spot for me to sort of keep going in that and feel like, “Well, okay, this isn’t happening. I’m doing everything I can here. At least life is still progressing.”
So, recognizing that you don’t know what life’s going to throw at you, being open to the opportunities that come, and also, because careers are long, you may have your foot on the gas pedal, and then you may take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit.
I have a lot of friends and classmates who are in a similar age and stage as me, and so they’re expanding their families, and different career paths are emerging for them that weren’t initially on the roadmap. They do want a little bit more space and flexibility.
So people are leaving corporate life to get into consulting, or people are leaving corporate life to pursue passions that they’ve had. And that might not be forever, but right now that’s what works.
And that’s the beauty of it: someday you can come back to corporate life, or you can do something entirely different.
So I guess my advice would be: careers are long. You can do lots of different things. Don’t try to lay out the perfect plan.
Having that advice, checking in with yourself, obviously, is important to just sort of say, “You know, where am I at personally, professionally? What are my goals here?”
And I think having that trusted-advisor network that you can bounce this off of is something that’s been really helpful and beneficial to me, too, as my own thinking and life point has evolved.
Jennifer Stewart: What do you hope is next for you?
Amy Childs: What do I hope is next for me? I’ve taken on a new role since coming back that I’m absolutely loving, and RBC has been so great in that way. Every job seems to top the last.
In my last job, I thought, “This is great. I love what I do. It can’t get better than this.” And now I’m in a role that is fantastic, and I’m absolutely loving it.
It gives me the opportunity to have a foot in across our business. But small business is a big part of the role, and it’s a really fantastic segment of our business.
We’ve got a great team, and we’ve got really bold ambitions that are focused on elevating the experience and the advice that we deliver to our clients.
I’m super energized by the task in front of me, and who knows what comes from that? But that’s what I’m focused on for the time being.
And, as I said throughout our conversation today, it’s also about continuing to be a good mom and a good partner and a good friend through it.
So that’s what I’m focused on for the time being, and maybe sleeping through the night soon, because my 11-month-old has decided that middle-of-the-night wake-ups are his jam these days, so I’m eager for that!
